Originally Posted by
BackSlash3
It occurs to me that this might be a crowd management strategy.
I was in Australia, connecting in BNE, and ended up sitting on the floor in the terminal, when (I found out later) Platinum cardholders are entitled to use the Virgin Australia lounge there, but it's only advertised to Australian Platinum cardholders.
It's the same with the lounges at YYZ, lounge access is available to all Platinum cardholders (USA and Canada at least) but only advertised to Canadians. It's otherwise available via the priority pass membership so it was moot in the Toronto case.
I got the notice about the EMP final dinner, and the Hamptons pop-up (View from the Wing had it first) but only heard about the Deer Lake pop-up from the community.
I can't think of any reason to not publicize benefits of the card to their cardmembers except that if they did publicize it, they'd expect overcrowding like the Centurion Lounges.
Thoughts?
Maybe we need a master thread of unpublicized Platinum Card benefits.
I think we're talking about several different things.
First there are the by invitation only events, which are advertised on the webpage. I think this advertising is just right. I've been to one event and it wasn't too crowded, which is as it should be. You're paying for access to exclusive things, which doesn't come in groups of hundreds of people.
Then there are the "lounges" which are really just popups, things like what ORD had a few years ago, and what some other venues have. These seem to advertise only via word of mouth. Again, this seems appropriate since they are usually niche locations where only a few cardholders would be (I don't even think there is a combined 2MM Plat and Cent cardholders in the US)
Third, there is priority reservations. This is where the EMP popup would fall. This has been widely publicized, will be curious to see how busy it gets.